From Cult to Canon, from Classic to Trash, this is the place to find out what yer old pal Jerky thinks about all the latest media! Cinema! Books! Music! Comics! Television! Bullet Reviews! In-depth Analysis! If you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to send them along!

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

NEW ON NETFLIX ~ BULLET REVIEWS

THE HISTORY OF THE EAGLES / NOW MORE THAN EVER: THE HISTORY OF CHICAGO ~ Over the last couple of weeks, I've spent a combined total of nearly six hours watching these documentaries about two of the most successful bands in the history of popular music: The Eagles and Chicago. Odd thing is, I didn't much care for either band prior to watching these in-depth, decades-spanning, warts-and-all explorations of their career highlights and lowlights... and now, after spending so much time with both bands, I still don't care for their music. At some point in both docs, the bathos gets to be a little difficult to swallow: "Waaah! We had too many hits! Waaah! The cocaine was too pure! Waaah! The groupies were too beautiful!" Both movies do an admirable job of chronicling the clash of monumental egos, the back-stabbing management shenanigans and record company rip-offs, and the obligatory late career comebacks, always suffused with a tinge of regret and, at the very least, one or two left-behinds who are unable to rise above the hard feelings generated by all the drug-fueled drama and chaos. But you can really see how much of what would turn out to be the worst parts of the 1980's were presaged by some of the seedier undercurrents in the popular culture of the 1970's. Before watching these, I'd seen the "Blue Jean Committee" episode of the Bill Haider/Fred Armisen parody series Documentary Now (IFC), and it turns out they were way more gentle and soft than they could have been. So, yeah... both these docs were a hard slog. But it could have been worse. It could have been a 4 hour documentary about Uriah Heep.

***

It's So Easy and Other Lies ~ Whoever convinced Duff McKagan that getting (kinda) sober, having two kids, and developing a mid-life obsession with martial arts is the stuff gripping biographies are made of... that person did the Guns and Roses/Velvet Revolver bassist a great disservice. I mean, the Duffster seems like kind of a nice guy and all, but this... this flick is an embarrassing enterprise on all fronts. From the idea of having Duff up on a stage, reading (slowly, haltingly) from his own recently published biography, to having him be surrounded by musicians providing a bed of cues and vamps that build towards what should be moments of great catharsis, only to have those moments be something utterly banal, like "we had another hit record!" Everything is so disconnected in tone that it leads us, the viewer, to feel completely alienated from Duff's life as he lived it. Actually, come to think of it, maybe that perfectly realized alienation makes It's So Easy the most true-to-life rock documentary ever made!

***

THE KEEPERS ~ Ryan White's ridiculously complex, infuriating, and disturbing documentary series dares to stare deep into the heart of darkness for hour after life-sucking hour. He might as well have called this one Trigger Warning: The Series. I won't bother giving you the details. This is, after all, a bullet review. If you're partial to the wave of Scandinavian Noir books, movies, and TV shows that popped up in the wake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, then you'll probably dig The Keepers. If you liked Making of a Murderer, you'll find White opening up a whole new bag of tricks for this outing. Either way, if you do decide to watch this, try to remember what Nietzsche said about staring into the abyss. Small bites... and maybe take a Jim Carey break between each episodes. I recommend Dumb and Dumber.

***

KARDASHIAN: THE MAN WHO SAVED O.J. SIMPSON ~ I suppose the success of ESPN's incredible documentary series O.J. Made in America made this documentary look into the life of the man who may have been instrumental in Simpson getting off inevitable. Surprisingly, it didn't make me vomit into my own mouth. Your mileage may vary.

***

IS GENESIS HISTORY? ~ There's an old publisher's cliche about how any news story or book title in the form of a question can usually be answered with an emphatic: "NO!" This most definitely turns out to be the case with Is Genesis History?, a competently produced but also profoundly dishonest attempt to frame the creation/evolution question as one of Deep Time orthodoxy versus the possibility of rapid Earth changes. The former is portrayed as Charles Darwin piling errors atop the foundation of 19th century geologist Charles Lyell's folly (Deep Time), while the latter is shown as being HIP! and FRESH! and backed by much beautifully photographed and convincingly argued (for the layperson) evidence. A brief perusal of online critiques of this film indicate that people who actually know what they're talking about find it even more offensive than just plain old activist atheists do... and we all know what a grumpy bunch THOSE guys are. Anyway, if you have no interest in checking out rebuttals afterward, I'd probably just skip this one. It's basically really well made Christian Fundamentalist propaganda... and who needs that in their lives?